The Los Angeles Police Department on Tuesday announced that detectives had issued an arrest warrant in the 1983 abduction and slaying of an 8-year-old girl in Watts.
Detectives with the LAPD's cold case homicide unit said prosecutors had filed murder charges against Luis Garcia Villalvazo, a Mexican citizen.
Victoria Denise Brown was walking home from Graham Street Elementary School in Watts in October 1983 when a blue van pulled up next to her.
The 8-year-old stopped briefly to talk to an occupant. Moments later, the van peeled away, and the little girl had vanished.
Police conducted an extensive search of the area, looking in storm drains, vacant lots and alleyways for any sign of the little girl. Twenty-six hours later, Victoria's body was discovered inside the lidless trunk of an abandoned car in a gritty industrial corridor in nearby Wilmington bordered by oil fields and auto wrecking yards.
Victoria, who had been snatched just half a block away from her house in the 9600 block of Anzac Avenue, had been sexually assaulted and strangled.
Authorities circulated leaflets that included a drawing of the van and a sketch of an unidentified Latino man 29 to 30 years old, 6 feet tall, 190 pounds with brown curly hair and light complexion. The Los Angeles Unified School District offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.
The mystery of who killed Victoria lingered for decades before time, technology and dogged detective work provided police with a suspect.
Garcia Villalvazo is currently serving a 92-year prison sentence for the murder of 7-year-old Airis Estrella Pando in May 2005. He also was found guilty in the sexual assault of three other young girls in Juarez in 2004. Villavazo committed those crimes in Mexico after having served 10 years, beginning in 1994, of a 19-year federal prison sentence in the United States, where he was convicted in Illinois of drug trafficking.
Authorities said DNA analysis was a key element in the investigation. DNA evidence from Brown's case was analyzed in 2004, but it did not initially appear that there were enough genetic markers to upload to the national DNA database.
Aided by advances in DNA technology, cold case detectives reviewed the evidence in 2009, and that November, the genetic material collected from the crime scene resulted in a match to Villalvazo.
